


Starve Them Out

by Punka_Writes



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Imprisonment, Missing Scene, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), So much angst, Starvation, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 09:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18775432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punka_Writes/pseuds/Punka_Writes
Summary: Missing scene (ish) for S2E5 "Shapes and Colors"The first Blackwing researcher to pin him to a table and describe him into a tape recorder was right, Martin is nothing human. Martin is nothing buthunger.





	Starve Them Out

Martin understands that he is dying. 

He always knew that death would hurt. Him and his boys, they’re not people who would get the chance to die painlessly any more than they’ve had the chance to live that way. 

He’d been just naive enough to hope, though, that when death caught up to him it wouldn’t be both painful and _slow_. On his most optimistic days he’d hoped it would catch only him, swallow him fast and sharp and leave the rest of the Rowdies somewhere far out of its grasp. 

Hope and optimism have never done him or his family jack shit, so he ain’t exactly surprised to have ended up here. 

Dying of starvation is slow agony. It’s hunger so bone-deep desperate that he can’t claw his mind away from it. It’s weakness that burns its way through every nerve fiber. It’s fear that boils into fury that dissipates like smoke because _hungryhungryhungryhungry_ is all there’s any room for.

It’s smelling that same slow anguish from the sunken cells on either side of him, so strong it can’t be held back by concrete. They’re dying alongside of him and he can’t do a goddamned thing, can’t reach can’t touch can’t help can’t hold can’t save. 

The scrap of life he tore out of Friedkin’s throat made the ache subside, but he fucked up not anticipating that they’d punish all three of them for doing it. That’s how Blackwing works: Martin fucks up and they hurt his family for it. Every time. He was out too long, he got sloppy, he let the part that was just _hungry_ do his thinking for him. 

They turned off the gas flooding the pits. He thinks that’s probably Priest’s doing, and without it keeping them slow and sleeping their bodies started burning through the reserves. Even strapped down, the Rowdies run hot. Out there in the world there’s enough stray pain to keep them coasting between hits of sweet adrenaline from Icarus or Amanda, but in here there’s nothing, there’s _nothing_ , Martin long since burned off Friedkin’s terror and confusion and Cross and Gripps, they didn’t even get that. 

He’s going to feel them die, close enough he could reach them if it weren’t for straps and traps and far enough away that they might’s well be on the goddamned moon for all the good he can do them. He’s going to feel them die and then the hunger’s going to eat him alive and Martin would scream and howl and claw men’s throats out if he could only get out of this fucking pit. 

He’s at least grateful that Vogel and Amanda are still out there, somewhere, alive. He knows that in his bones, knows it like he knew his Rowdies when he first set eyes on them, like he knows how to crack open a human’s soul and drink the panic and _goddamnit he’s so fucking hungry_ . . .  
If Vogel and Amanda were in this building he’d feel it, and if they were dead Priest would have used it, which means they’re neither. They’re alive and they’re together because how could they not be, because they _belong_ to each other like only Rowdies can. They’ll keep each other safe, if safe is a thing that people like them can ever be. 

It’s not gonna do jack to save Cross or Gripps or Martin himself, but it’s something. 

He can’t sleep anymore, the hunger won’t let him, but sometimes he closes his eyes and he thinks he does something like dreaming, catches flickers of the drummer girl behind his eyelids, too fast to be any kind of comfort. Sometimes he smells water and something else, green and growing, a smell without a sense-memory to go with it. 

It makes him hungry, because everything makes him hungry, because the first Blackwing researcher to pin him to a table and describe him into a tape recorder was right, Martin is nothing human, Martin is nothing but _hunger_. 

Martin ate that guy, come to think of it. He lets out a sound that isn’t quite laughter. 

“Martin?” Cross smells like fear. “You okay?”

“Not even a little bit.” Martin drops his head back against the cold metal behind him, rolls his head from side to side just to be _moving_ something.

“. . . yeah. Me neither.” It’s almost too quiet to catch. Gripps is counting on the other side. Martin can’t tell what. Seconds. Heartbeats. Something. 

He never wanted them to die in Blackwing. He never wanted them to die _at all_ , he wanted them to run wildfire-bright across the goddamned country and back forever, he wanted to keep them safe. 

Look how that’s turned out. 

He closes his eyes and tries to summon something that isn’t the same tortured cycle of fear and fury, hunger and despair.

The van. Woodsmoke, dark night, cold beer, _hunger_ Cross, Gripps, music too loud, _hungry_ , stars too bright, highway wind howling _hunger_ through the open driver’s side window

_hungryhungryhungry he would eat a thousand men if he had the chance right now and not feel a goddamned shred of guilt about it, he’s just that hungry . . ._

Vogel. Amanda. Spiraling mandelbrot sets of light behind his eyelids (what?), green smells and 

_hunger_

water

_sohungry_

He’s falling, the drop so abrupt it makes his heart lurch, and he doesn’t hit the floor but plummets into something like water, cold and depthless, and this is not what he expected dying to feel like, but it’s happening and he lets it happen because what’s the alternative? 

At least, he thinks, at least he won’t be hungry anymore.


End file.
